A STUDY ON THE EFFECT OF PROCESSING METHODS ON THE TOXICOLOGICAL COMPONENT OF UKPO (MUCUNA SLOANEI)

ABSTRACT
Matured Mucuna Sloanei “Ukpo) seeds were sorted cleaned, cracked to expose the cotyledons. The cotyledons were divided into three equal parts. A portion was roasted in hot ash for 50 min while a portion was boiled at 1000c for 30 mins. A raw sample was used as a control. The sample were milled, sieved and package prior to analysis. The flour sample were subjected to anti-nutritional analysis using a standard methods. The result were statistically analyzed using analysis of varience (ANOVA). The means separated using least significant difference (LSD) at 95% confidence limit. From the results some components reduced with roasting while other reduced with boiling. Phytate had the higher values (80.41-73.73)% while Alkaloid had the least values (0.58-0.50)%. Thus the combination of dry and wet heat treatment with other pre-processing operations should be applied in order to reduce the anti-nutrient to acceptable levels.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
Ukpo (Mucuna Sloanei) is among one of the legume found in the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. It is food thickener known to originated from Asia and was introduced into the western hemisphere (Akpata, 2001), it is known as horse eye bean and with other local names in respect to different tribes and ethic groups. It is called Ukpo by Ibos, “Karasuu” by Hausas and “Yerepe” by Yourbas (Ayozie 2010). The belong to the legumes family. They are other species of mucuna throughout tropical regions of the world including Mucuna urensi, Mucuna Pruriens and mucuna veracrua (Ezueh and mozie, 2004).

Nutritionally, the important of mucuna sloanei (UKPO”) lies in high content of protein and lysine. They are usually limited in sulplur contaning amion acids partially methioine. They are better source of phoshorus, but calcium (Okaka et al, 2006). Ukpo (Mucuna sloanei contain 20.0-25.4%, crube protein, 43.3% -49%, CHO, 5.05-7.0% fat, 25.0-27.4% crube fiber and about 6.4%-14. moisture (Akpata and machi, 2001.
Ukpo (Mucuna Sloanei ) is used in preparing various soup as soup thickener (Udensi, 2004). When the seeds are cracked the cotyledons of the seeds are boiled, sufficiently to soften them and grineded into power in the eastern part of Nigeria. They are sometimes broken the seeds and the colyledons were roasted with hot ash, grinded and used as soup thickeber. In addition to their thickening property Ukpo has gelation properties used in soup. This is a desirable attribute for eating of garri, Fufu, pounded yam etc. it has been reported that the nutritive value of some mucuna utiles have been improbed by heat treatment due to the reduction of their anti-nutritional factors content by them (Manssour et al 1993) Ukachukwu and Udesi 2002, et al, 2004).

Food thickeners as consumed by millions of people in Nigeria. Thickening agents or thickeners are substance which when added to a mixture increase its viscosity without substantially modifying aroma. They increase stability and also improve suspending action of a mixture. Currently, they are produced on a cottage industry, scale which vares from one ethic groups and locality to another.